Once I Was A King

“Once I was a King” I say to the somber young man standing by my bed. I remember that much. Once I was a king. I had a queen, a lovely woman with joyful eyes and mischief in her smile. Her hair was red as a sunset, eyes dark as the fresh turned earth, fair skin dotted lightly where the sun kissed her cheeks. 

Once I was a king. I had a daughter with the look of her mother but eyes like the summer sky, hair pale as straw. I remember she had a way about her, an intelligence coupled with sharp humor and a quick wit. I was a father. I was a husband. I was a king. 

Once I was a king. When foreign folk sacked villages and killed my people, I went with men bearing my standard to bring peace and order to the land once again by driving out the threat. 

Once I was a king. They came again, these foreign men with strange clothing and even stranger talk. They spoke of things not of my land. They didn’t belong. I went yet again to drive them out. 

My wife. She cautioned me not to go. She said I would die if I went this time, that they would defeat me if I went to war. She begged me to sue for peace.

But I was a king and a stubborn man. I went with malice. I fought gleefully to drive them back again as I had before. But this was different. They brought with them a little bald grey man with a little grey book. 

This sorcerer changed from his little book and the battle went in their favor, so I ran the little gray man through with my spear. With his dying gasp he chanted from the book again.

Once I was a king, but the little grey man called down his spell upon me. Madness entered me and I forgot. I forgot that once I was a king.

The enemy overran my lands, put my advisors to the sword, ran my family out of our home. But I was no longer a king, I was no longer anything. The madness swept away all memory of what I was. I did not know or did not care. 

I was once a king. Then a maddened animal with nothing. Then nothing more than a memory. 

Now I lay here in this bed, I feel my life slowly coming to an end and I remember. I was once a king. 

And the young man by my side, he nodded and his quietly said “yes, you were once a king. Yet now, as you lay dying you are a king no longer. Many a year has passed since you were once a king. You begged for scraps from your people, though they had forgotten you as surely as you had forgotten them.”

“True. I was once a king. But not a good king, I think. They were right to forget that I was once their king.”